Lebanon Hostage Crisis - Motivations

Motivations

According to scholar Gilles Kepel "a few of the kidnappings were money-driven or linked to local concerns, but most obeyed a logic whereby Hezbollah itself was no more than a subcontractor for Iranian initiatives." Motivation for the hostage-taking includes:

• Insurance "against retaliation by the U.S., Syria or any other force" against Hezbollah, for the killing of over 300 Americans in the Marine barracks and embassy bombings in Beirut.
• The release of four Iranian officials who had been kidnapped on July 5, 1982 by Christian militia Lebanese Forces (aka Phalangists) 25 miles north of Beirut. In December 1988, Hashemi Rafsanjani publicly addressed the Americans just before he was elected president of Iran:

If you are interested in having your people held hostage in Lebanon released, then tell the Phalangists to release our people who have been in their hands for years.

The Iranians included Ahmad Motevaselian, the Ba'albek commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard contingent, and Mohsen Musavi, the Iranian charge d'affairs to Lebanon. (The other two Iranians were Akhaven Kazem and Taqi Rastegar Moqaddam.)

• Pro-Palestinian Lebanese believed they could use the first American hostage, David Dodge, "as a means of pressuring the American to do something about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon ..."

• Lebanese Hezbollah member Imad Mughniyah wanted to free his cousin, brother-in-law Mustafa Badreddin, one of the "Kuwait 17" (the 17 imprisoned perpetrators of the 1983 Kuwait Bombing).

The hostage in captivity the longest, Terry Anderson, was told that he and the other hostages had been abducted to gain the freedom of their seventeen comrades in Kuwait convicted of perpetrating the 1983 Kuwait Bombing of six key foreign and Kuwaiti installations, "what might have been the worst terrorist attack of the century had the bombs' rigging not been faulty."

• Another of the Kuwait 17, Hussein al-Sayed Yousef al-Musawi, was the first-cousin to Husayn Al-Musawi, leader of Islamic Amal, a sister militia to Hezbollah that was later merged with Hezbollah.

• Islamist Shia wanted to use French hostages to free Annis Naccache, who was the leader of the Iranian backed assassination team attempting to kill former Iranian Premier Shapour Bakhtiar. Naccache was a Christian Lebanese who had converted to Islam and pledged allegiance to Khomeini following the success of the revolution. He was a "close personal friend" of "Ahmad Khomeini, son of the Iranian revolutionary" leader, "Mohasen Rafiqust, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp commander in Lebanon", and of the aforementioned Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniya. They appear to have been completely successful in their efforts.

On 18 July 1980, Naccache was arrested for the attempted to kill Bakhtiar. A gendarme and a bystander were killed in the subsequent battle with the police. Naccache and three others were given life sentences ... Naccache's release later became a condition for freeing the Western hostages in Lebanon.

Naccache was freed" on 27 July 1990, together with four accomplices, after being pardoned by President François Mitterrand. All five men were put on a plane bound for Tehran. The deal also brought political, military and financial benefits to Iran itself: the release of its frozen assets and desperately needed spare parts for their armaments. The French also kicked out most of the Iranian opposition leaders who had taken sanctuary in their country following the revolution."

French hostages were released by kidnappers at the same time. France denied reports that they had made a deal.